Company Ethical Issue Identification

Prepare a 4-5 response paper that analyzes an ethicaldilemma and makes recommendations to address that ethical dilemma.

Introduction

Once you havelooked at the broadest dimensions of corporate and personal ethics, it ishelpful to understand the theories behind the issues and to try differentapproaches in analyzing them. Challenge yourself to both assess your ownreasoning within those prevailing theories and to understand differences inpreferred modes of operating within the context of ethics and business. Yourlearning will be most rewarding if you take the time to reflect by assessingyour previous ethical decisions and determining whether you would have acteddifferently given a second opportunity.

It is alsouseful to examine specific stakeholder issues in the external environment whereboard members, regulators, and consumers participate in the business processevery day. To what extent should they shape or influence ethical behavior inbusiness?

Overview

Ethicaldilemmas within companies can have various forms Some well-known examples wouldbe:

• Gender inequality (paying a man more than a woman for the same work).
• Embezzling.
• Privacy breaches.
• Inappropriate use of social media.

For thisassessment, you should consider a suitable company-wide ethical dilemma anddiscuss why you believe it is a problem and how you would remedy the dilemma.This exercise provides the opportunity for reflecting on ethical issues in theworkplace and helps you to better understand their impact and how fixing theissue can benefit everyone.

Instructions

You will firstneed to identify a current or potential ethical dilemma in a company. Thiscould be a company where you are now employed, a former employer, a friend’scompany, or another company that had an ethical dilemma that you may have readabout in the news. The issue should also be something that needs to beaddressed with an organizational policy inside the company, such as harassment,discrimination, embezzlement, or fraud. In other words, you believe that apolicy change would be better than other courses of action (such asdisciplinary action toward an individual employee, or external action by thegovernment or a nonprofit) to remedy the issue. You do not have to create apolicy at this time; you just need to explain why implementing a policy wouldbe the right choice to address the situation or issue.

For example, acompany may choose to videotape the office and read employee emails, so what’s thebig deal? The conflict in this example could be that employees feel thesepractices are a violation of privacy and they feel entitled to a certain levelof privacy. However, company owners and stakeholders defend these practices onthe premise that they are ensuring employees are remaining productive andgetting their work done.

Follow thesesteps to complete your assessment. For all of these steps, make sure youprovide examples and information from credible sources to support your writingand claims:

• Step 1: Analyze an ethical dilemma that needs to be addressed.

• Describe the current ethical dilemma and how it affects various stakeholders.
• Explain how the ethical dilemma warrants a company to take the time to address it.
• Explain the implications of not addressing the ethical issue.
• Step 2: Analyze the different methods for resolving the ethical dilemma.

• Describe the different ethical methods that are available to be used.
• Explain how these methods can be applied to resolve the ethical dilemma.
• Explain the ramifications and consequences of not addressing the ethical dilemma.
• Step 3: Recommend an appropriate method to address the ethical dilemma.

• Explain how the organization can fix and address the dilemma.
• Explain why you think your recommendations are appropriate and the right approach to addressing the specific dilemma.
• Step 4: Describe how a specific ethical dilemma corresponds with larger issues on a regional, national, or global level.

• Discuss how this specific dilemma could impact policies and regulations on a larger scale.
• Incorporate the ramifications and consequences (discussed in Step 2) with your description of how the ethical dilemma could impact all levels.